TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Moving Beyond 'He Said, She Said'

ADVERTISEMENT

By JOCELYN NOVECK, The Associated Press

Published: October 14, 2007

NEW YORK - Back then, she was either a charlatan or a heroine, depending which side you took in the epic, gut-wrenching showdown that was the Clarence Thomas confirmation battle.

Sixteen years later, Anita Hill can be found on a tranquil New England college campus, sifting through thousands of documents to try to answer the question: Have things gotten any better in our nation's workplaces?

Hill was already at work on her project, examining about 25,000 pieces of correspondence she's received since those circuslike hearings, when she found herself in the spotlight again. Thomas had come out swinging in his new autobiography and accompanying media blitz, describing Hill - whose sexual harassment allegations nearly derailed his Supreme Court nomination - as rude, a mediocre worker, greedy, opportunistic, and of course, a liar.

Hill wrote an op-ed article standing by her claims. She did the same on 'Good Morning America.' And now, she says, she wants to move beyond the old 'he said, she said' questions to more substantive ones.

'What I want to know is whether we've made progress in the last 16 years,' Hill said in a telephone interview from suburban Boston, where she's a visiting scholar at Wellesley College, on leave from her permanent appointment at Brandeis. 'I do hear from people who say things in the workplace have improved. And I think that's significant.

'But what's behind it, I don't know. Is it a fear of litigation, or is it because employers want to do the right thing? And if they're doing it right, does it really matter?'

Hill acknowledges her guarded optimism is based on anecdotal information. Ask lawyers in the field of sexual harassment whether things have actually gotten better, and you'll get a decidedly mixed answer.

'Yes and no,' says Kathleen Peratis, a prominent employment and discrimination lawyer in New York. 'Employers are much more sensitive about it, and much more worried about it. But it's from a liability point of view. They don't understand that the root problem is gender discrimination.

'They address the superficial conduct. More important would be to address the underlying imbalances in the power relationship.'

Peratis notes it's extremely difficult to know how many cases get resolved satisfactorily, because the vast majority get settled out of court, with binding confidentiality orders. We only hear about the tiny percentage that actually make it to trial.

As for Hill, she says she's taken aback by the revived debate that has accompanied Thomas' book.

'I'm surprised that 16 years later, we're doing this again,' she says. 'But I think we can look at this as an indication of how critical this issue is, how it affects people very deeply.' This time, she says, the argument isn't merely about what happened when Thomas was her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the early 1980s.

'This round of attention goes to the issue of sexual harassment generally, and how we are going to respond to it,' she says.

Another question, she adds, is whether Thomas can have an open mind on the bench when it comes to gender issues. 'People are questioning his objectivity and his ability to really deal with the facts,' Hill says, 'given the number of facts he completely ignored or invented in his book.'

Hill, who's been in academia since leaving the EEOC in 1983, says she conceived her current project when the 15th anniversary of the Thomas hearings approached.

She aims to have formed a collection of the letters before the 20th anniversary in 2011, but also wouldn't rule out writing a book before then.

'This wasn't planned as a response to what he Thomas said,' says Hill. 'Even without his book, these letters are important.' And she includes in that description the hate letters, too.

'Those,' she says, 'will teach us as well.'

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT